


Good and Faithful

by Cyphomandra



Category: Robin McKinley - Damar series
Genre: F/M, Yuletide, challenge:Yuletide 2007, recipient:subterrain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-08
Updated: 2010-07-08
Packaged: 2017-10-10 10:51:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/98942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cyphomandra/pseuds/Cyphomandra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They also serve who only stand and wait.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Good and Faithful

**Author's Note:**

> Richard's quote is taken directly from The Blue Sword, and has been a hook in my head since I first read it. I am sorry there are not more Hillfolk, but although they are great for writing pages of horsy scenes about I had an awful lot of trouble with actual plot.  
> Many, many thanks, to my last minute betas, Sharon and Alison. All remaining misuses of semicolons are entirely my own fault.

  
Fandom: [Robin McKinley - Damar series](http://yuletidetreasure.org/get_fandom_quicksearch.cgi?Fandom=Robin%20McKinley%20-%20Damar%20series)

  
Written for: subterrain in the Yuletide 2007 Challenge

by [Cyphomandra](http://yuletidetreasure.org/cgi-bin/contact.cgi?filename=44/goodand)  


Harry watched the reflections of the candle flames flicker in the polished oak of the heavy table. The colonel had fallen asleep in his chair, iron-grey head tipped to one side and his jaw hanging loose. She should get up; call one of the compound's staff to help the colonel into bed, and then walk down the shadowy corridor to the small room where her daughter slept, one hand likely still curled around her bracelet of plaited horse-hair.  


The candle closest to the half-shuttered windows had almost guttered out. She dipped her fingers in her water glass and pinched out the wick, the hiss too soft to disturb anyone.  


"Jack," she said. The colonel's chest rose and fell, undisturbed.  


The colonel looked smaller asleep, and his true age showed in his face without the light of his personality to hide it. He had sprained his hip in a fall a month ago, and still walked with a stick; he was not, yet, riding, although he declared that it was only a matter of time.  


Harry leaned her chin on her hand, elbow propped on the table. She had been at the fort for almost a week, incognito ("a friend," the colonel had said, and his underlings apparently found nothing unusual in this description of an apparent Hillwoman with a small child and a strong grasp of Homelander). The compound was defensive in name only, functioning more as a convalescent home for officers afflicted with swamp fevers or other diseases of the tropics further south, and she had come here from Nisis unescorted, in the hope of catching him unguarded. It had not worked. "He talks to everyone," one of his aides had said, exasperated, during a day when they'd been trying to get him to sign a particularly vital paper; perhaps that was true, but he said very little. And nothing of why he'd left the City.  


Before he'd fallen into a doze they had been talking of the past; not Harry's defence of Ritger's Gap, something she was still wary of examining too closely, but years earlier, when Jack Dedham was a young officer newly arrived in Daria, stationed at what was then one of the most troubled border outposts. He had first seen action the day after he hopped off the troop wagon with twenty other equally bemused recruits; a small enough skirmish but one where nothing went as any of his textbooks or field exercises would have had it. Firearms jammed, carts sank into previously firm ground, and girths that had been tightened, double- and triple-checked, slipped free at the worst possible moment.  


"I thought that was it," Dedham had said. His faded grey eyes met Harry's, a warrior's acknowledgement. "Our line broken in the first charge, my carbine useless - everything was dust and shouting. The Damarians rode through us as if we were nothing but a shop window full of stuffed dummies - I could see the notice in the Times. "Killed, on Tuesday, John Louis Dedham, 2nd Lieutenant, 16th Lancers, with ignominious ease."  


His tone was amused rather than bitter. Harry shifted in the high-backed Homelander chair. She still felt a fierce grief when thinking of the Homelander settlement of this country, a grief all the more painful for having no clear target. Certainly not this man: her first, and only, Rider.  


"With honour, surely," she said. Dedham laughed, short and wheezy, and coughed until the tears stood in his eyes. Harry picked up the heavy water pitcher, but the colonel waved her away with one hand, reaching instead for the shot glass of spirits - physician-forbidden, he'd said, but what did they know - that sat at his elbow instead.  


"Nothing like that, these days," he said. "This -" his gesture included himself and the compound. "It's all gone, or going. It's all trade and money now."  


Yellowed despatches and old maps littered the table between them, loose edges fluttering in the breeze.  


"You could come back to the Hills." The scar on her palm itched.  


Dedham didn't meet her gaze. "No."  


She'd pushed before, and gotten nowhere. She watched him rifle through the papers, picking out a hand-drawn map and pushing it over towards her.  


"They need someone to remind them," he said. The date on it was just after settlement began, and the map sketchy and inaccurate. In the Hills west of the city the mapmaker had drawn a dragon, one forefoot pulled back and wings extended, jaws open in a silent hiss. "Damar is unreal to most of us at the best of times."  


Aerin had, not least, removed the threat of dragons, and Harry had dealt with the North. The borders were quiet, these days, although the occasional headstrong youth snuck over the Northern border to risk their neck, or that of their horses; with Sir Charles' retirement, the imperial delegates to Damar came less infrequently, and their visits had the bored politeness of obligation to them. In return, few Damarians went further south than the desert; Harry herself, despite her intentions, found it difficult while in Damar to remember any other world. Even now, this room seemed unreal and fragile, the desert outside far more present than any of the solid objects indoors.  


Occasionally the imperial delegates forwarded requests to visit: fellows of the Royal Society, mostly, proposals framed in rigidly academic language. Corlath refused them all, citing a reluctance to be examined and pinned ("Like a butterfly," he'd said to Harry, eyes gleaming, "And I feel the strain of the comparison all too keenly.").  


Gonturan slept in her scabbard on the wall of the throne room. Harry had taken Aerin to see the sword, often, but would not let her touch it yet. When she'd sipped the Water of Sight at last year's laprun trials she'd seen Luthe's lake, the mist coiling up from it like smoke, and Tor chasing Narknon at the water's edge, trying and failing to catch her quick tail; she'd stood there three months later, the image made reality, the only additions the thick scent of summer lilies and the thrum of dragonflies.  


"Besides," Dedham said, and Harry glanced back at him. He had picked up his pen, and tapped it on the table. "I need to write my memoirs. Not a chance with your brood distracting me."  


Jack had spent the afternoon with Aerin, even lifting her (shrieking with excitement) on top of the cannon that stood in the centre of the parade square, much to the concern of his aides. He could not plait horse-hair, perhaps, but he'd been the one to pull the hairs from the tail of his white mare, with whom Aerin had fallen in love, and hand them to a more nimble-fingered groom.  


"They are - difficult," Harry said, smiling. "Your memoirs?"  


The colonel looked back at the scrawled record of his first battle.  


"Even then," he said, shaking his head. "I stood there, waiting to die, and all I could do was look at those horses."  


Harry opened her mouth to ask and, considering, shut it again.  


He was still sleeping. She would slip away and look for one of the staff, and then go to bed herself; she had planned to leave tomorrow, and there was no reason to stay.  


"Harimad-sol?"  


Harry turned towards the whisper to see Mrs Hughes, the compound's house-keeper, standing in the doorway, hands clasped primly in front of her starched apron. A stout Darian woman, she managed the house with a standard of precision the rest of the base had yet to live up to.  


"Should we wake him?" she asked, keeping her voice low.  


Mrs Hughes shook her head, avoiding Harry's eyes.  


"Harimad-sol," she said again. "May I talk to you?"  


She'd spoken in Damarian, although stiffly. Harry blinked. "Of course," she said, in Homelander.  


"Your city," Mrs Hughes said, shifting languages to follow Harry, with obvious relief. Her Homelander had the broad tang of the north-eastern counties. "Is it clean?"  


Harry stared at her. "Clean?"  


"I am particular about these things," Mrs Hughes said. "I have served the military for twenty years come February, and I have seen more than enough filth to last me the next twenty."  


She paused expectantly. Harry, baffled, thought of the City in the hills; stonework like lace, draped casually over the fronts of buildings, the racks of drying mihrab in late summer, spread out wherever there was sufficient space; the air in the morning when she went down to the stables, sharp and intoxicating.  


"It is cared for," Harry said, "and much loved."  


Mrs Hughes pursed her lips. "Hmm," she said.  


Footsteps outside, and the chink of metal. Someone called out, "On time again, Samuels?" and was answered with a muttered curse.  


The housekeeper ducked her head to Harry, and left, back stiff as she moved down the corridor. Beyond the shutters Harry could see figures moving in the darkness of the compound, and the flicker of lanterns - the evening sentry change, she presumed.  


The mantel clock, ticking quietly, had reached quarter past eleven. She cleared her throat.  


Dedham woke up with a start, mouth snapping shut.  


"Eh?" He blinked at Harry. "Harry, girl, you let me fall asleep."  


Harry lifted one shoulder in apology. "I was thinking," she said.  


Dedham snorted. He heaved himself up in his chair with a grunt and shouted "Collins!" to the air, his voice still capable of carrying without difficulty. Harry pushed her own chair back.  


One of the papers on the table - a map of the peninsula - had caught under the colonels' hand, creasing. He straightened it out, holding it flat with one hand, his gestures slow and deliberate, and ran one gnarled finger down an unmarked line - from the Hills to the desert, then the lowlands, and finally, to the sea.  


The border of old Damar. Before settlement.  


"Will you jump the gate again when you leave?" he said, and Harry wondered if he had ever been asleep. "I still don't believe it you did it, you know."  


Collins was the colonel's valet, another Darian, tall and impeccably dressed. He offered to summon a maid to help Harry to bed. Harry declined, politely, and for a moment Collins stood there, a dark figure against the candlelight; then, so quickly she almost missed it, he touched his fingers to his forehead and flicked them towards her in deference, with a soft "Harimad-sol," before going to help the colonel.  


It was like being pushed, very gently, over an entirely unexpected drop.  


She went to her room, but once she had checked on Aerin, sleeping sprawled in her cot, she found herself unable to follow suit. Instead, she paced up and down the narrow room, grateful for the military lack of clutter if for nothing else.

  
_"You needn't have much to do with the natives,"_ her brother Richard had told her, when she first came to Daria. _"There are the servants, of course, but they are all right."_  


There were, she guessed, almost fifty servants on this base alone, kitchen hands, maids, groundskeepers and grooms; brown skinned, quiet and correct. They were expected to serve without question and go where they were wanted and, like Mrs Hughes and Collins, be saddled with Homelander names when their own were deemed too difficult to pronounce. The natives. Darians. A hundred years ago, they were Damar's.

_"They need to be reminded."_ She had presumed he'd meant Homelanders. Who else, after all, was there?

The walls were too close. Harry turned again in a swirl of robes and stubbed her toe on the brass bedstead.  


She couldn't think. She bent over Aerin's cot, smoothing back her curls, and then went out again, shutting the door as softly as she could.  


The gravel of the parade ground was a dull white in the moonlight, the cannon a black brooding presence. From where Harry sat on the edge of the veranda she could smell horses, pleasantly familiar, and when the wind picked up, the faint spice of the desert. She pulled another fold of robe across her shoulder and wished, fervently, for a cup of malak to wrap her hands around.  


Collins came out, silent and graceful, and sat down six feet away, head bowed.  


It was like climbing a mountain, Harry thought, only here she was not gripped by fate, or _kelar_, nor guided by a sword, or the words of a yellow-haired man who'd lived longer than anyone should. All she had was herself.  


Even as she thought it she knew it was untrue. She had what Jack thought she was, and whatever these people hoped for.  


She cleared her throat. "I would like to know your name," she said. "And - and who you chose to serve."  


"Nejii," Collins said. Like Hughes, he had a Homelander accent. "And Damar."  


***

In the morning Aerin insisted on saying goodbye to each of the horses and the cannon, audibly wistful at the prospect of not taking the latter home. Harry kept an eye on her as she saddled Sungold, the grooms deferring to her with more muttered "Harimad-sol"s. Sungold snorted and executed a neat croupade as she took him out onto the parade ground. "You," Harry said, accusingly, but she felt some of the same excitement.  


She was still unsure what to do about the Darians; unsure, even, whether it was her decision or not. She had gone back to the drawing room, last night, and marked on a more recent map details of one of the desert routes, long but less prone to the dangers of short water supplies and shifting sands. Doing even this much felt like setting free the first pebble of a landslide.  


The colonel was waiting for her at the gate, one hand on his stick. One of the companies was on the parade ground, going through drill, the measured stamps of their feet echoing off the wooden palisades. All around the base Harry could pick out figures in black and white and grey, rather than soldier's brown, more than seemed to have reason to be there. Watching her. Assessing her, if less directly than Mrs Hughes.  


When she got to the gate she dismounted, leaving Aerin on Sungold, and turned to face Jack.  


"Thank you for your hospitality," she said. There were too many people within earshot to be other than formal.  


Dedham shook his head. "Pleasure's all mine," he said gruffly. "You're welcome at any time."  


"As are you," Harry said.  


"I miss the Hills." Dedham looked at her, finally, a brief glance before looking away. "But I'm needed here. I will come when I can."  


The aide who'd complained about Dedham's rambling rolled his eyes, but with affection.  


"Yes," Harry said. The sun was in her eyes, dazzling them. Sungold nudged her in the back.  


Jack held out his hand, palm down, and said, in Damarian, "I pledge myself..."  


Harry reached out to tap the back of his wrist with her fingers in acknowledgement. "It is I who owe you," she said in the same language. She caught his hand when he tried to withdraw it, and curled her fingers around to feel the same scar in the palm that hers had. "I owe you," she said again, and his fingers tightened briefly on hers in response.  


***

Harry had no hope of arriving in the City unannounced. Corlath and Tor met her on the plains before the city, where their reunion could be less decorous than anything more public. When Corlath set her back down again, reluctantly handing Aerin over to her insistently demanding brother, Harry pushed back her loose hood and laughed at him.  


"I hoped he might come back with you," Corlath said. One of his hands crept back to the nape of Harry's neck, toying with a loose strand of hair.  


"No," Harry said. She thought Jack might, still, but it would be a race between his will and his health, and he had a disturbing fondness for last stands. "Not him."  


Corlath, picking up on her tone, ran his thumb down the angle of the jaw and lifted her chin to meet his gaze.  


"I may," Harry said, after a moment, "have invited some other people."  


   
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